Kenneth Alford

Kenneth Joseph Alford is a pseudonym taken by Major Fredrick Joseph Ricketts. As a composer he is best known for his marches, the most famous of which being Colonel Bogey. British officers of his day were not encouraged to pursue interests outside the Services so, as a Lieutenant, he published works under a pseudonym. The first name, "Kenneth", was that of his eldest son, and the surname, "Alford", was his mother's maiden name.

Major Fredrick Joseph Ricketts (21 February 1881 - 15 May 1945), joined the Royal Irish Regiment as a musician in 1895 and was commissioned into the Royal Marines as a Director of Music in 1927. He retired in 1944 with the rank of Major.

Ricketts/Alford is known as "The British March King", and is considered by many to be Britain's equivalent of America's John Phillip Sousa.

List of marches

• The Thin Red Line (1908) - named after his regiment's nickname, acquired in the Crimean War, when the "thin red line" of British soldiers held back the Russian advance. Not published and available to other bands until 1925.
• Holyrood (1912) - presumably named after Holyrood House, in Edinburgh. This march is the quick march of the RAF Regiment.
• The Vedette (1912) - A vedette is a mounted sentry, a term probably familiar to Ricketts from his time in India but unfamiliar today.
• Colonel Bogey (1914) - Apparently named after a real person, a member at the golf course where Ricketts played. This was re-arranged (and a new counter-melody added) by Sir Malcolm Arnold for the film Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).
• The Great Little Army (1916) - the British Expeditionary Force in France in the First World War
• On the Quarter Deck (1917)
• The Middy (1917) - Both this and the previous march were possibly written to commemorate the Battle of Jutland
• The Voice of the Guns (1917) - meant initially to honour British artillery in World War I (hence the name), later it became widely adopted by the British army as a whole. Not to be confused with the poem of the same name by Gilbert Frankau (1916). Featured prominently in the film Lawrence of Arabia (1962).
• The Vanished Army (1918) - dedicated to the memory of the first 100,000 soldiers who perished in World War I.
• The Mad Major (1921) - Major Graham Seton-Hutchinson was the Mad Major, whose war exploits had won him the Military Cross and a DSO.
• Cavalry of the Clouds (1923) - A salute to the new Royal Air Force
• Dunedin (1928) - named for the Dunedin Exhibition of 1925/26 in New Zealand
• Old Panama (1929) - Ricketts returned from Dunedin by way of the Panama Canal
• HM Jollies (1929) - "HM Jollies" is a nickname for the Royal Marines, which Ricketts had just transferred to.
• The Standard of St George (1930) - Inspired by watching The Trooping the Colour at Horse Guards Parade.
• By Land and Sea (1941) - written by order of the Adjutant General to provide a ceremonial march
• Army of the Nile (1941) - dedicated to General Wavell for halting the advance of the Axis Powers in Egypt
• Eagle Squadron (1942) - The Eagle Squadron was composed of American servicemen in the RAF before America joined in the war. It then transferred to the USAAC. The march quotes The Star-Spangled Banner.

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Other works

• Valse Riviera (1912)
• Thoughts (1917)
• A Musical Switch (1921)
• The Two Imps (1923)
• The Lightning Switch (1924)
• Mac and Mac (1928)
• The Smithy (1933)
• The Two Dons (1933)
• Colonel Bogey on Parade (1939)
• The Hunt (1940)
• Wedded Whimsies (?)
• Lillibullero (1942) - An arrangement of this traditional army marching song, which was used as a signature tune of the BBC radio program about the Commandos, Into Battle.
• A Life on the Ocean Wave (1944) - An arrangement of Henry Russell's ballad of the same name

External links and references

• Midis of many of his marches
• MIDI sequences of piano transcriptions of 7 Alford marches (scroll to bottom of page)